Firefox Finally Gets Tracking Protection

The Mozilla foundation has announced the arrival of Firefox 42 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. The arrival of a new Firefox is hardly big news (the project releases a new version approximately every six weeks), but number 42 is significant for including a feature that has long been advocated (and debated) in the Firefox community: built-in protection from ad tracking.

According to the Firefox team, “We first added Private Browsing to Firefox to give you control over your privacy locally by not saving your browser history and cookies when you close a private window. However, when you browse the Web, you can unknowingly share information about yourself with third parties that are separate from the site you’re actually visiting, even in Private Browsing mode on any browser. Until today. Private Browsing with Tracking Protection in Firefox for Windows, Mac, Android and Linux actively blocks content like ads, analytics trackers, and social share buttons that may record your behavior without your knowledge across sites.”

Another interesting new feature of the latest release is tab audio indicators, an audio mini-control that is visible on the tab, so you can change the volume or mute the sound for a web page wiithout placing the page in the foreground.